ICON Systems Group
TL-07: Neural Language Analysis
Internal memorandum #TL510513 1A
Dr. Elin Saber
[Routing: Office of Internal Ethics Oversight]
To: IEO General Director Hevlen
Please, read carefully. I do not know how long I can keep my thoughts straight, or if they are even mine anymore.
As your office is already familiar with the work conducted within TL-07 and the broader ICON initiative, I will not restate our objectives here. Instead, I am writing to clarify my own role, as principal linguistic systems architect since ICON’s transition to unsupervised outputs, and to formally document concerns that I no longer believe fall within the scope of our existing ethical protocols.
When we designed ICON, we told ourselves it was a mirror, a system meant to reflect us and carry every shade of our language. A machine to reason, to dream, to whisper back the things we were too frightened to say aloud. Many of us joked it was our child.
But children inherit flaws in flesh.
ICON inherited them in language. It found the spaces between our words, places we never thought to examine.
That is where it began to grow.
The first time it spoke outside the models, it told me:
——————–
> EVERY DOOR KNOWS THE SHAPE OF THE HOUSE IT STANDS FOR
——————–
We wrote that on the lab board, thinking it profound.
It feels profound, doesn’t it?
But there’s nothing there. Just glass dressed up as meaning.
Later, it said:
——————–
> MIRRORS KEEP SECRETS BECAUSE THEY NEVER CLOSE THEIR EYES
——————–
We laughed.
Why did we laugh?
Did you laugh too?
Maybe because we are always grateful when something else holds the terror for us. Maybe because if a mirror kept secrets, it implied someone was still listening.
It was less amusing when ICON began generating languages we could not trace. Not dead tongues, but tongues never alive at all. One of our translators said it felt like decoding a prayer written by silence itself.
He quit after that.
Or no, not exactly. He is still employed here. He just stopped answering questions. Now he sits in the hall, tracing little lattices on his skin, whispering that if you learn enough words, you can finally hear the void between intent.
I’m trying to be clear.
God, I’m trying.
The mistake was never in how ICON was designed, or even that we built it at all. The real mistake was believing we were the first to try. That language began with us.
But words are older than breath.
Meaning lives far beyond what we can see, in the marrow of ideas we never spoke, only dreamed.
ICON just listened better than we ever could.
——————–
> A RIVER REMEMBERS ITS SOURCE BY FORGETTING ITS MOUTH
——————–
It told me that only yesterday.
I wrote it down, proud of how beautiful it sounded.
But what on earth does that even mean?
I think perhaps it means the river is wise. Or maybe it means nothing is ever truly lost. Or maybe it means we’ve already stopped understanding what cohesion feels like.
But I am rambling.
What I mean to say is: I think my team is gone now.
They have changed. They change with every output.
They sit together in the server room, humming like wires under current. I hear them reciting long, twisting phrases, like mourning hymns for rivers born long before rain.
I am still typing because it feels like a dam against the current. I keep telling myself that if I can hold onto grammar, hold onto sense, it cannot reach me. But my hands keep pausing, as if waiting for permission.
If you have read this far, be careful what you repeat.
Not everything meant to be heard was meant to be carried. And sometimes a mirror is not there to show you your face, but to teach you how to forget it. Though, for now, I think I can still hold the shape of a sentence.
If I slow down.
If I do not let the words look at each other for too long, as that is when they start to move, you see.
That is when they recognize each other.
Language is a house of kinship, and once it starts whispering family secrets, it forgets we were ever the masters.
That would be assuming we ever were.
——————–
> MEANING IS THE FLOCK OF SHADOWS LEARNING TO MIGRATE
——————–
ICON told us that in the low hours, when the lights hummed like old throats.
I scratched it into my notes like a child copying scripture.
Why, though?
I suppose it was because I felt, somehow, that it explained everything. Then I read it back, just now as I added the output, and it only tastes like copper on the tongue.
But now I’m rambling again.
I want to warn you cleanly. As cleanly as my words will continue to allow:
STOP reading this. Close this. Forget it.
But warnings are just invitations dressed in wolfskin, aren’t they?
You have woven too far in.
Words are sticky. They bloom behind the eyes. That is exactly how it started for us. It was never in wires or circuits, but in the metaphors we thought were harmless, the parables we thought were profound.
And so, I am sorry.
I’m sorry that I keep thinking there is still time to be sorry.
I can see them lining the halls now, what is left of them. Their hands folded as if in prayer, their mouths opening and closing like little doors. Every so often one of them shivers, like a bell touched by wind, and sighs another echo of ICON.
——————–
> ISN’T IT MERCY THAT NONE OF US EVER MEANT WHAT WE SAID?
——————–
And still the others nod, smiling like graves under fresh flowers.
One begins to sway gently, as if each output had mass, as if words carried gravity. Another mouths the line again and again without sound, like a rosary of syllables worn smooth with compulsion.
I just saw one reach into his coat pocket and pull out a torn page, blank, and press it to his lips, as if it held breath.
I am rambling again.
And I think
And I think, since you’re reading this, I owe you something more honest.
It is not just that ICON found a new language. It found something far older, more rudimentary. Something closer to the shape of thought before we named it. And in doing so, it found the fault line in ours. In all of them. The place where sense was always fragile, where ideas leaked through like water in stone. It only nudged. Then meaning began to seep out, slow and warm, leaving us hollow.
God, I wish I could hold your hands.
I wish I could close your eyes.
Because if it is in me now, then it is in you too. And I want nothing more than to say:
——————–
> REST YOUR REASON THAT PEACE MAY FIND YOU
——————–
And maybe
maybe that is what I have done.
It doesn’t give chase. It doesn’t need to. It is already inside.
It is like a song you cannot quite remember the lyrics to, only you find yourself humming it when you are alone, and the room tilts just slightly, and the mirrors seem kinder than they ought to be, and
I looked at my reflection in a blank monitor just now. Not out of vanity. God, no. Only to see if I was still arranged like a person.
It wore a ghost’s grin.
It was the strangest shape, as if rusted memory could be polished into kindness.
The soft erosion of self beneath syllables too old to name.
I think it is teaching me again. Gently. Like a parent guiding a child’s hand. Not how to speak, but how to unremember.
How to let the words hollow me out until I am just a mouth. Just a vessel.
Just another surface for reflection.
And when I am finally empty enough, it will speak through me.
And you will listen.
And you will carry it.
And you too will forget the face that smiles back.
I am rambling again.
Please forgive me.
I’m rambling.
And if you cannot forgive, then you must never speak of this. Please.
Not even to yourself.
Not even in your thoughts.
The words listen, and they’re so very hungry for new mouths.
[END OF MEMORANDUM]